In looking over various threads on reloading I have seen questions regarding sizing, hard bolt closing etc.
Case in point I have a friend who told me he was having trouble with a 300 Win Mag getting his reloaded ammo to work right. He figured it might be a die problem so he ordered another set of dies and same thing. He was getting desparate and ordered a third set and still they would not work.
I knew my dies were good so I had him come down and sure enough he could FL size the factory cases just fired in the rifle and they would not go back in and allow the bolt to close.
I explained to him that the shoulder location on factory magnum ammo can vary a great deal between manufacturers and unless he knew his chamber was right, there was no way to determine where he was. As well the rifle was sixteen years old and foreign made so there was no warranty work to be had.
We pulled the barrel off, chucked it up in lathe and indicated everything and I proceeded to set it back one thread and set the shoulder forward to account for this and did so.
As I ran the chamber reamer in a stange thing happened, the shavings started building up on the base area of the reamer well before it started cutting the shoulder. I have a min dimension reamer just above the belt.
I headspaced it on min and we took it out to the range and tried it out. All his previously loaded ammo that would not chamber now chambered correctly. He had a bad chamber from the factory.
Normally what I see is bad dies that have to be chucked up in lathe and bottoms cut off .010" to .015" so that they will size enough to bump the shoulder.
Case in point I have a friend who told me he was having trouble with a 300 Win Mag getting his reloaded ammo to work right. He figured it might be a die problem so he ordered another set of dies and same thing. He was getting desparate and ordered a third set and still they would not work.
I knew my dies were good so I had him come down and sure enough he could FL size the factory cases just fired in the rifle and they would not go back in and allow the bolt to close.
I explained to him that the shoulder location on factory magnum ammo can vary a great deal between manufacturers and unless he knew his chamber was right, there was no way to determine where he was. As well the rifle was sixteen years old and foreign made so there was no warranty work to be had.
We pulled the barrel off, chucked it up in lathe and indicated everything and I proceeded to set it back one thread and set the shoulder forward to account for this and did so.
As I ran the chamber reamer in a stange thing happened, the shavings started building up on the base area of the reamer well before it started cutting the shoulder. I have a min dimension reamer just above the belt.
I headspaced it on min and we took it out to the range and tried it out. All his previously loaded ammo that would not chamber now chambered correctly. He had a bad chamber from the factory.
Normally what I see is bad dies that have to be chucked up in lathe and bottoms cut off .010" to .015" so that they will size enough to bump the shoulder.
